4 ms·

whats being described is in no way unique to ai. "In other words, Levie’s theory posits, CEOs don’t really understand processes well enough to know what really

whats being described is in no way unique to ai. "In other words, Levie’s theory posits, CEOs don’t really understand processes well enough to know what really can and can’t be automated. But that lack of knowledge doesn’t stop them from acting on their beliefs." i have been in the workforce for a long time. this "theory" has been theorized since as far back as i can remember. its the premise of undercover boss. its the punchline of many r/maliciouscompliance writing exercises. the higher up the company you go, the more disconnected you are from the workers on the front line, the less you understand about their needs, and the more likely you are to push for something without understanding the totality of the impact of the decision.

andsoitis 5mo ago
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Often you need to disregard the detail and minutiae of existing processes to set a better course. The goal is not to avoid short or even medium term pain or even unintended consequences at a department level, but rather to steer the company in a new direction. Processes should adapt or be thrown out to achieve the new direction. This is not too dissimilar when you realize a software architecture is holding you back. You don’t try to “save” all the existing functions, modules, layers, etc. but instead are happy to discard or replace them given your top-down vantage point of the system and where it needs to head.
- zerkten 5mo ago
  You still need to manage that change to varying degrees. For every organization which can shift on a whim, there are many more which require mitigation. Normally, there are a lot of things carried forward for internal or external reasons. Developers tend to discount the amount of effort from other actors in the system because they don't understand all of their priorities and which map neatly versus not.
- jimbokun 5mo ago
  And then you go out of business because you were busy rewriting Netscape Navigator while Microsoft was churning out new versions of Internet Explorer.
basch 5mo ago
Or you answer to somebody else, which is how perpetually cannabilizing next quarters numbers to appease short term shareholders becomes more important than cost savings and using your labor pool time to solve actual problems. Or when the sales teams bonuses are more important than the margins of the business. There’s lots of reasons the “wrong work” gets pushed down and it’s not exclusively because “they aren’t listening” as much as “they are listening to someone else who matters more.”
- WalterBright 5mo ago
  > Or you answer to somebody else, which is how perpetually cannabilizing next quarters numbers to appease short term shareholders becomes more important than cost savings and using your labor pool time to solve actual problems. If CEOs were actually wrecking their companies in order to get a fake short term boost, they'd be shortly out of business. If a person was sure a CEO was doing that, they'd be making money shorting the stock.
  - exmicrosoldier 5mo ago
    Github? Windows? Ibm? Intel? Boeing?
    - WalterBright 5mo ago
      Github and Windows aren't companies. A more productive view would be looking at an index of tech companies - try QQQ.
      - g8oz 5mo ago
        There is a great deal of ruin within a nation - and a company.
  - TheOtherHobbes 5mo ago
    Well - the premise is that they will indeed shortly be out of business, because their increasingly slop-coded infra will collapse within the next year or so. Or if it doesn't, token inflation will kill their profitability. A lot of people are putting big money on both sides of those predictions, and they can't all be wrong.
christkv 5mo ago
lol just reminds me of the SNL sketch about Kylo Ren undercover boss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaOSCASqLsE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaOSCASqLsE
InsideOutSanta 5mo ago
What's unique to AI is that CEOs now have a robot that supports that disconnect. Our CEO recently announced that he has now started doing frontend programming, by which he meant that he had told ChatGPT to output some HTML. No doubt it also told him how smart and clever his ideas were and what a great engineer he was. This kind of thing only increases the disconnect between what CEOs think employees do and what they actually do.
- john_strinlai 5mo ago
  maybe the html part is unique to ai, i suppose. but a c-suite picking up some tool, making a toy example, then declaring “well doing X is super easy, roll it out” (or “change the kpi”, etc.) is something i have seen dozens of times.
  - the_af 5mo ago
    HTML is not relevant here. I think the problem is that LLMs are qualitatively different. "No code" tools are usually just tools. They have the pitfalls you describe, but they aren't ego stroking machines like LLMs. LLMs not only share the same pitfalls, they also encourage you to make the dumbest things. They will make this CEO believe they are the smartest engineer in the world, "you're building exactly the right product", "you're asking precisely the right questions", etc. Ego stroking when leading you to the abyss is very dangerous. LLMs roleplay as smart human engineers who constantly tell you you're the smartest being in the multiverse.
    - tigerlily 5mo ago
      As an aside, I see you're referring to Al as merely LLMs, which I appreciate and applaud. I am thinking of calling them just 'LMs' for short, as they come in varying sizes. Or even AlMs, just to troll the Al moniker, and how they give alms to the rich.
    - deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
  - 5mo ago
J_Shelby_J 5mo ago
It doesn’t have to be this way. It’s a by product of tax policies and lax anti-monopoly policies that allows incompetence to thrive. If a company gets too big to fail, then it stops calibrating for competency. The most effective military leaders in history had a deep understanding of fighting war because they came up through the system and the cost of failure was their death.
e40 5mo ago
> whats being described is in no way unique to ai. Exactly. For decades we've talked about "reality distortion fields" of various CEOs. I'm worked with CEOs that had them. AI just supercharges the reality distortion field.
themafia 5mo ago
It's the same as any other bad information entering the decision loop. In this case they were promised "AI" can do things it cannot. They're having trouble rectifying what they were told versus what they experience. It's not unique to AI. It's common to many other organizationally risky and dangerous scenarios.
HerbManic 5mo ago
I have had higher ups that actually understand the products, work flow and have a great grasp on things. Slow to understand things but make well educated and deliberate moves. These folks are are VERY rare however.

andsoitis 5mo ago

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Often you need to disregard the detail and minutiae of existing processes to set a better course. The goal is not to avoid short or even medium term pain or even unintended consequences at a department level, but rather to steer the company in a new direction. Processes should adapt or be thrown out to achieve the new direction. This is not too dissimilar when you realize a software architecture is holding you back. You don’t try to “save” all the existing functions, modules, layers, etc. but instead are happy to discard or replace them given your top-down vantage point of the system and where it needs to head.

zerkten 5mo ago
You still need to manage that change to varying degrees. For every organization which can shift on a whim, there are many more which require mitigation. Normally, there are a lot of things carried forward for internal or external reasons. Developers tend to discount the amount of effort from other actors in the system because they don't understand all of their priorities and which map neatly versus not.
jimbokun 5mo ago
And then you go out of business because you were busy rewriting Netscape Navigator while Microsoft was churning out new versions of Internet Explorer.

basch 5mo ago

Or you answer to somebody else, which is how perpetually cannabilizing next quarters numbers to appease short term shareholders becomes more important than cost savings and using your labor pool time to solve actual problems. Or when the sales teams bonuses are more important than the margins of the business. There’s lots of reasons the “wrong work” gets pushed down and it’s not exclusively because “they aren’t listening” as much as “they are listening to someone else who matters more.”

WalterBright 5mo ago
> Or you answer to somebody else, which is how perpetually cannabilizing next quarters numbers to appease short term shareholders becomes more important than cost savings and using your labor pool time to solve actual problems. If CEOs were actually wrecking their companies in order to get a fake short term boost, they'd be shortly out of business. If a person was sure a CEO was doing that, they'd be making money shorting the stock.
- exmicrosoldier 5mo ago
  Github? Windows? Ibm? Intel? Boeing?
  - WalterBright 5mo ago
    Github and Windows aren't companies. A more productive view would be looking at an index of tech companies - try QQQ.
    - g8oz 5mo ago
      There is a great deal of ruin within a nation - and a company.
- TheOtherHobbes 5mo ago
  Well - the premise is that they will indeed shortly be out of business, because their increasingly slop-coded infra will collapse within the next year or so. Or if it doesn't, token inflation will kill their profitability. A lot of people are putting big money on both sides of those predictions, and they can't all be wrong.

christkv 5mo ago

lol just reminds me of the SNL sketch about Kylo Ren undercover boss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaOSCASqLsE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaOSCASqLsE

InsideOutSanta 5mo ago

What's unique to AI is that CEOs now have a robot that supports that disconnect. Our CEO recently announced that he has now started doing frontend programming, by which he meant that he had told ChatGPT to output some HTML. No doubt it also told him how smart and clever his ideas were and what a great engineer he was. This kind of thing only increases the disconnect between what CEOs think employees do and what they actually do.

john_strinlai 5mo ago
maybe the html part is unique to ai, i suppose. but a c-suite picking up some tool, making a toy example, then declaring “well doing X is super easy, roll it out” (or “change the kpi”, etc.) is something i have seen dozens of times.
- the_af 5mo ago
  HTML is not relevant here. I think the problem is that LLMs are qualitatively different. "No code" tools are usually just tools. They have the pitfalls you describe, but they aren't ego stroking machines like LLMs. LLMs not only share the same pitfalls, they also encourage you to make the dumbest things. They will make this CEO believe they are the smartest engineer in the world, "you're building exactly the right product", "you're asking precisely the right questions", etc. Ego stroking when leading you to the abyss is very dangerous. LLMs roleplay as smart human engineers who constantly tell you you're the smartest being in the multiverse.
  - tigerlily 5mo ago
    As an aside, I see you're referring to Al as merely LLMs, which I appreciate and applaud. I am thinking of calling them just 'LMs' for short, as they come in varying sizes. Or even AlMs, just to troll the Al moniker, and how they give alms to the rich.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
- 5mo ago

J_Shelby_J 5mo ago

It doesn’t have to be this way. It’s a by product of tax policies and lax anti-monopoly policies that allows incompetence to thrive. If a company gets too big to fail, then it stops calibrating for competency. The most effective military leaders in history had a deep understanding of fighting war because they came up through the system and the cost of failure was their death.

e40 5mo ago

> whats being described is in no way unique to ai. Exactly. For decades we've talked about "reality distortion fields" of various CEOs. I'm worked with CEOs that had them. AI just supercharges the reality distortion field.

themafia 5mo ago

It's the same as any other bad information entering the decision loop. In this case they were promised "AI" can do things it cannot. They're having trouble rectifying what they were told versus what they experience. It's not unique to AI. It's common to many other organizationally risky and dangerous scenarios.

HerbManic 5mo ago

I have had higher ups that actually understand the products, work flow and have a great grasp on things. Slow to understand things but make well educated and deliberate moves. These folks are are VERY rare however.